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In case you have never seen the work of Julian Beever you have to take a look. A friend of mine read about him in a newspaper and pointed me to his images. When you imagine a pavement artist you imagine flat chalk pictures, but this guy is totally different, his work actually looks like it stands up from the pavement, see for yourself on his site.
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16 Comments
I’ve seen this and others a few times and still cannot fathom how they can so accurately portray depth and perspective.
It’s also scary to realize how easy it is for your mind to be completely tricked into believing something. Makes you question our perceptiveness.
He is awesome, isn’t he? I’ve actually seen his work in situ a couple of times – and the pictures just don’t do it justice!
You know… This is one of the first things I ever blogged about… http://destyled.com/blog/2007/01/15/art/interesting-concrete/
Hi Jake and Paul,
His work is just amazing isn’t it! I’d like to see it in the flesh so to speak.
Paul where did you see his work in London?
A friend told me about this work a while ago but I recently stumbled it and thought it was worth a quick post for anyone who hasn’t seen it.
Wow!
That swimming pool is superb! Thanks for featuring his work, Tara. If I’ve seen it before then it certainly hasn’t been for some time.
I think he was drawing outside Marble Arch tube station when I saw him originally… It’s really strange – if you stand in one place it looks awesome, move five meters forward and it’s indistinguishable as a piece of art!
I’ve always found anamorphic art fascinating, ever since I saw the hidden skull in Hans Holbein’s Ambassadors.
It’s a great technique – I just hate it when it’s used to plaster giant ads on sports pitches for TV cameras. I really resent an advert I can’t simply not look at. Grrr!
Seriously, though, it’s amazing stuff and totally mind bending in terms of how to pull it off so well!
I’ve seen these before, but I never knew he had a site. Did you see the view of the Make Poverty History drawing from the side? It was 13m long! Whoa! The thing that gets me is how does he know how to make them? You have to have a mind that is very good at spacial problems in order to do this, I think. It’s amazing!!
I hadn’t noticed that – how does he do it, anyone know?
As far as I can tell, it’s just an ability to visualise it in his mind. It’s a real art form!
Mind you, if you showed him a semantically marked up site and a stylesheet, he’d probably be just as amazed at what it becomes when seen online…
Neither is any less art IMHO!
Could you not just use Photoshop or something to make a mock up of how it ought to look flat-on and then use that as a reference while doing it on the pavement?
Go on then Matt, show us your photoshop drawing
Paul, If you showed him my XHTML and CSS mark up, nobody would be any the wiser – including me
LOL @ Tara! You’ll get there…
Matt – I guess mocking something up in Photoshop would be possible, but you’d still have to be skilled to translate that onto a pavement – because of the differences in angles etc. Besides, it would be like using the Frontpage Design Wizard to create your site…
Someone emailed me photos of his work a while back, and I didn’t know he had a site either. It’s amazing to me how people can be so creative. Have you seen the “paper art”? I don’t know what the right term is, but it’s basically 3D creations made from cutting and folding pieces of paper. I’d link it up if I had a URL. Those are impressive too. I just don’t have the patience for something like that!
Hi Charity,
I’ve linked my name to an article on paper art. When I first saw it I couldn’t believe someone’s hands were so steady!
Excellent work indeed I have seen him performing on a video he was amazing. There are many artists that do the same thing but this doesnt make it less impressive.
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[...] to Tara at Graphic Design Blog for reminding me of Julian’s excellent chalk drawings. Quite a few others out there are big [...]